News and commentary on the autism epidemic and my beautiful boy who is living with autism.

August 31, 2005

Chandler Just Asked His First Question!

We have been chelating Chandler since last fall, taking some big breaks in between rounds. We have not been chelating him this summer. We took a long break to switch doctors, give his body a rest, make sure all his essential minerals were replenished, do a bunch of testing and we will go it again when school starts in two weeks.

We did a DMSA challenge to reassess his lead and mercury levels, and in the last few days, he has made a big jump forward. You would think that I would not be surprised any more when he makes gains on chelation, but I guess I read so much that ‘it is not proven effective’, that I begin to doubt what I have seen in the past year.

In the few days following the 300mg dose we gave him for the urine test he has made some really good changes. He is just ‘more there’. It is hard to describe unless you know him well, but I will try.

First, in the last few days he has spent a lot more time with me. I was cooking for an hour and he spent the whole time sitting across the kitchen counter from me, playing with spoons and watching me. He also gets really upset when ever I leave and he can’t come.

He has started playing with the cats. Until now they have been invisible to him.

He has been asking for things like usual, but not like usual. He has added a few more four word sentences “I want light on”, but the most remarkable thing is that when he tells me what he wants, he is looking into my eyes expectantly for an answer. Before it was just, submit request “I want hot dog”, walk to kitchen, receive requested. Now he asks me for something, then just hangs there with this ‘please, please’ look on his face and waits for me to respond.

So this was the coolest thing. Today Sara Jane was over and all three kids were in the back yard. Chandler asked to swing (his favorite) and I said OK and the two of us walked toward the swing. When Web and SJ saw that Chandler was going there, as children do, they suddenly thought the swing was the coolest thing in the yard and everyone was fighting over it. So I closed the swing for business and directed them to the kiddie pool.

About 15 minutes later, Chandler came back up to me and said, “I want swing.” I said, “sorry baby, no swing” and waited for him to throw himself on the ground crying. He didn’t.

Instead he looked back up at me, cocked his head to the side and said, “I want slide?”

That was “I want slide?” with his voice going up at the end of the sentence, on the word ‘slide’, as people do when they ask a question!!!!

He was, in his heart, asking me, “Well, if I can’t go on the swing, can I go on the slide?”

We have never ‘taught’ intonation, he just picked it up by listening.

It was a great reminder of how well he does on chelation. If this is the improvement after one dose, I can’t wait to see what he starts doing this fall.

Say a little prayer for me that his next sentence is, “I wanna go potty”.